


The Book of Chuck

by gretazreta (Greta)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greta/pseuds/gretazreta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he’s the chosen prophet of the Lord, why is his life so fucking out-of-control? Written for preferthemoss for spn_j2_xmas exchange, 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Book of Chuck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [preferthemoss](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=preferthemoss).



Some days Chuck hates the fucking words so much that it’s a matter of willpower alone that he doesn’t pick up his keyboard and smash it through his front window. 

He’s not sure what Mrs. Smeldt next door would think about that, but he suspects that she wouldn’t be surprised. She’s got her suspicions about him, most of them with some foundation. He has, after all, passed out in her garden at least a couple of times on his stagger home from the bars in town. This one time he woke in the morning so grievously tangled in the thorns of her rosebushes that he had to call out for her to come and unhook him. He doesn’t really remember much about that day except for the thunderstorm of hangover inside his head, the piteous sound of his own whimpering and the thin line of Mrs. Smeldt’s lips as she came out in her pink flannel robe with a pair of pruning shears in her hand.

But it’s not just willpower, is it? 

It’s not just that he doesn’t want to have to go and retrieve the thing later, it’s not just that he’d give a sheepish wave and Mrs. Smeldt’s lace curtains would twitch closed as he turned, as if she wasn’t watching, as if she didn’t luxuriate in her moral disapproval of his bad behavior.

It’s not that the keyboard would probably break, but in an irritating half-assed way, so the space bar wouldn’t work properly, and, say, letter H wouldn’t work properly: not enough so he’d be able to justify replacing it, but enough to make typing a real fucking chore.

It’s the fact that the blank page is even worse. 

Might as well write, then.

The keyboard casts well-worn familiar patterns under his fingertips, smooth and compelling and seductive, the tiny ridges on F and J guiding his index fingers, and it’s almost too easy to let the sentences emerge, spill of black across the monitor, as though they’re the children of his hands, and not of his heart. 

_The children of his hands, fathered by Bourbon, out of the womb of Despair._

Chuck types it, looks at the sentence, and can’t even hate himself anymore. He pushes delete quickly, 75 times, and the sentence unravels and that’s a profound relief. It’s so easy, sometimes, pretending to be meaningful. Once upon a time, writing could make him laugh, or weep real tears. Now it just makes him money, and not that much of that, not really.

His first three novels are filed in the drawer of his grandmother’s old dresser, stored in his garage where he won’t chance upon them by accident. _The Confessions of A Monkey’s Uncle_ , printed on flimsy beige newsprint with smudgy ink: crass, brave, embarrassing – his first. _Shimmer Land_ , with the fish-eye photograph of the Los Angeles skyline that he’d argued so vehemently with his editor for (it sold less than a thousand copies anyway). And, his favorite, _Glory Days of Ivan Smith_ , the secret book of his heart. There are reviews carefully clipped and filed between its pages. He goes out some evenings, usually into the bottom third of a bottle of gin (which always makes him more maudlin than anything else he drinks, but then maybe that’s because he drinks it when he’s in the mood for self-pity, like Victorian Londoners) and reads the reviews again, as if the harsh words might have somehow rearranged themselves into praise while he wasn’t looking. He doesn’t know why he does it, picks away at the scabs of his dignity and pride. It just serves to remind himself that he was once so very much braver than he is now.

Tidily stacked on the top shelf of the bookcase in his living room: the Supernatural books. He doesn’t read them – if the truth be known, he doesn’t even remember writing them, one after another, in a furious haze of midnight drinking. He knows every detail, anyway, without having to look. 

He knows everything, from how much money Sam Winchester had saved towards his engagement ring for Jessica Moore, to the colour of the underwear Adam was wearing the day he was killed by the ghoul; the number of times Dean Winchester almost called Sam while he was away at college; what Sam gave Dean for his twenty-ninth birthday. 

Every vivid little detail of the Winchesters’ lives is in Chuck Shurley’s head: the way the hellhounds’ breath stank like sulphur and graveyard earth; the way demon blood tastes of iron and tangy warmth and sickly sweetness, how the first time Sam drank it, he vomited it up, clotted-red all over the bathroom floor. Chuck’s publisher went bust, but Chuck writes on, regardless. He just can’t help himself.

**  
 _Supernatural_ through _All Hell Breaks Loose_ bought him his house: it’s kind of a shitty house, and he’s pretty sure it’s lost value since he moved in (a mixture of credit-crunch and poor housekeeping), but it’s a roof over his head, and he’s not enough of a jerk to not be grateful for that. _Supernatural_ has put food on his table. _Supernatural_ has paid off the interest on his student loans, if not the loans themselves. 

In return, _Supernatural_ has stolen his inspiration, a neater little crossroads deal than any he’s written about. There’s nothing more to write in him, nothing that isn’t Dean, nothing that isn’t Sam - no matter how Chuck tries, no matter how he disguises the characters with different names, different lives, different universes. Everything turns into the Winchesters, with their co-dependence and their angst and their exclusive all-embracing love for each other that leaves him envious and baffled.

He started drinking through the day hoping it would blunt the edges of his inspiration, but it doesn’t work. At night he dreams of Dean Winchester’s pain and Sam Winchester’s anger, decision after decision and step after step down the well-intentioned road to hell for both of them. 

He wishes he’d never thought of either of them. He wishes he were still living in the spare room of his parent’s house, writing unpopular, critically-panned novels that he struggled over and rejoiced in. It’s no wonder he can’t write anything else: there are just too many details struggling to make their way free. He sees everything.

Everything.

Sometimes he wishes he could get through the day without a drink, but while it does nothing against the Winchesters in his head, it muffles his sadness and his fear and his self-doubt. He knows that without that, there’d be no writing at all.

**

The morning that Sam arrives is no different from any other. Chuck gets out of bed and lurches towards the bathroom, brushes his teeth and spits mucus down the sink. He’s got a headache, but he’s out of Advil. He’s got cornflakes, but the milk in the refrigerator smells sour like sick and comes out in lumps when poured. He’d like to think that pouring bourbon neat onto cornflakes in lieu of 2-percent is a low point in his life, but really it’s not.

That comes later.

He opens the door and there on the doorstep is Sam Winchester, larger than life, and more than Chuck could ever have imagined. But, it turns out, Chuck didn’t imagine Sam. His one perfect creation isn’t his creation at all. For that fleeting moment, though, Chuck feels better than he ever has in his whole life. He feels real himself, more than real. He feels like God.

**

Hold on a minute. Just... wait.

If he’s the chosen prophet of the Lord, why is his life so fucking out-of-control? A Prophet of the Lord deserves milk for his cereal. Fuck that, a Prophet of the Lord deserves fucking bacon and eggs. Hollandaise sauce. Asparagus. Fucking _steak_. What the fuck.

**

Chuck’s never seen Dean as clearly as Sam. Dean’s taller than Chuck anticipated, and his smile is not as bright as Chuck remembers. Chuck knows what Dean did in Hell, but he can’t work out why everyone (Sam, the angels, Dean himself) is so unforgiving of Dean breaking down there. Thirty years, forty years? Chuck wouldn’t last forty minutes. He’s seen it. He _knows_. 

Dean walks like a man who’s fought for so long that he’s forgotten why he’s fighting.

When Chuck looks at him, he can see two characters, overlaid, one on top of the other, the edges not quite matching, the Dean before Hell, the Dean after. He’s no longer the man he was, the gallant adventurer who loved his brother more than life, who only cared about saving people, and hunting things, and Sam. Sam’s changed as well, in response. He’s grown hard. He’s lost his sense of humor, his sense of honor. Why wouldn’t they change, though? After everything Chuck’s put them through? 

There are lots of different ways a person can go through hell. Chuck’s just not sure that anyone really wants to read that.

**

Sam has to duck slightly to come in the door. He’s strong, and tall, and beautiful, and damaged, and Chuck knows what he’s been doing with the demon blood and he knows _why_. He just wishes it wasn’t the way the story was going. He wishes there was some other way, but he doesn’t know what. Which means he’s probably not a god at all. That’s actually kind of a relief, because, man. That’s a responsibility. He’d probably have to look at the big issues. World hunger, and so on, and he’s got no idea where to start.

He’d like to think that in another reality, this whole scene pans out completely differently. Chuck is articulate, smart and helpful, and the Winchesters look at him in barely concealed awe. In this reality, Chuck’s reality - the one he’s becoming increasingly accustomed to, sadly enough - he’s too shocked and shaken to really do anything but stare. 

Sam takes the words right out of his mouth. It’s like way the pair of them have stolen Chuck’s writing from him. There’s nothing to say, no words, and that’s horrifying, like the sun turning black or the seas turning to blood, or all the horrors it turns out that they all have to look forward to. They’ve taken his _words_. 

Chuck’s never been good-looking, not really, though some days if he looks at himself at a certain angle in the mirror he can see something potentially attractive there. He’s never felt really smart, at least, not in a useful way. He’s never been the sort of person who others turn to, a problem-solver, a go-getter. He’s not even sure if he’s even written anything good: he’s certainly no Steinbeck or Capote or even a half-assed Palahniuk. But he’s always been a writer. He’s always known _that_ about himself. He’s a wordsmith, no, a word-wrangler, a knight-errant of sentences. He doesn’t always win, but he’s always up for the fight.

Sam Winchester steals that away. Sam Winchester, in the flesh, is pretty much beyond words.

**

Chuck’s the prophet of a God that he didn’t even believe in until today – actually, he’s not sure he does now, and that’s an existential dilemma worthy of Beckett, now, isn’t it? It’s going to take some getting used to. He supposes he should feel blessed, chosen, special, but apparently the world is ending. 

Worse, it seems he’s not really an author at all. Maybe he never has been. He’s seized by desire to run to the garage, to rifle through his reviews, no matter how painful and dismissive, because they prove he’s a writer, albeit unrespected. He’s tempted to go online and check the readers’ blogs on his fan-sites, and count the hits. They’re not geeking out about some Judeo-Christian bullyboy of epic proportions: they’re fans of Chuck, not God. Aren’t they?

**

There’s another thing. A kind-of important detail.

Sam.

Sam moves with a careless kind of grace, a determination. He’s strong, bright and sharp, and Chuck feels blurred by comparison, the only thing left in him the heavy tug of desire in his belly. He wants to touch, to run his hand along the exposed tender line of Sam’s forearm, just to see that he’s real. He wants to touch his jaw, trace the place where his stubble turns into the intimate soft place under his ear. He wants to press against him, feel his strength, his three-dimensionality, his reality. Chuck wants to see Sam Winchester undone, wants to see him throw his head back and laugh, wants to taste him, wants to lie down with him, wants to make him come, to see what that would look like.

He can picture it so vividly that he can’t even tell if he’s seeing the future or the past or his own fantasy. And really, he’s more of a narcissist than he could ever have imagined. He’s in love with his own creation brought to life. He should just start singing “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” and get on with it.

Dean says something, and it’s like hearing sound from above when he’s underwater, like the moment in the bathtub when Chuck slides right under and contemplates staying there. Sam turns to Chuck, as if a reply is needed, and their eyes lock. Sam sees Chuck looking, and the moment stretches into infinity. Sam _knows_.

“I don’t remember,” Chuck answers - always in his experience a useful comeback when he hasn’t been listening. Dean rolls his eyes (and Chuck’s written about that often enough to feel a pang of recognition) and turns away. 

Sam’s still looking. Chuck can feel his close attention, the study that Sam’s making of him. He wishes he put on a fresh shirt this morning. Hell, he wishes he put one on yesterday. He feels _crumpled_ and sweaty and really just kind of gross.

There are all sorts of revelations: with a lower-case R, and with an upper-case R. Apparently apocalyptic seals are breaking all over small-town America. Apparently Sam and Dean are the only ones who can stop it. Apparently Chuck’s stepped inside his own narrative, tangled in his own deconstructionist death-of-the-author post-modernity. Only with extra God, which he supposes means it’s not post-modern at all. Pre-modern? Does it really matter?

He’s not sure what sort of words he’s going to use to describe himself, when it comes to write this down, but he can’t think of any good ones. Not when the world’s ending, and Chuck’s just hoping that he’s not imagining the look in Sam’s eyes. When he’s contemplating what Sam’s dick would feel like in his mouth. He can't even bring himself to be ashamed. “Perverse” is probably a good word to start with; “desperate” and “repulsive” also spring to mind. Okay, he’s kind of ashamed of himself: it doesn’t change how he feels though, like his skin is itching for touch.

They leave, and Chuck leans back against the smooth cool wood finish of his front door. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

**

Sam returns, by himself. It’s not really a surprise - Chuck knew he would. Sam’s always been impatient to know the future, and he’s even more so, now there’s so much at stake. Chuck wonders where Dean is, but Sam’s full of secrets, and he just wants to know what’s going to happen.

Chuck, the prophet, doesn’t know how this is going to turn out. He hasn’t seen it, not yet.

Chuck, the regular guy, the guy who calls his parents every Sunday, who’s quit drinking for good on three separate occasions, who watches CSI on TV but hates the Miami version, who majored in Twentieth Century Philosophy at college and is now having a crisis of un-faith, who wastes too much time on the internet, who’s on poor terms with his neighbor but shovels the snow from her driveway every winter, nonetheless – that Chuck knows that nothing good can come of what Sam’s doing. 

He says so, but he knows Sam’s not going to listen.

Sam just looks at him, focuses on his mouth, until Chuck can’t talk any more, until he trails off, and just stares back. He wants to believe that he knows what he’s seeing, but he’s quite frankly not sure.

Faith has never been his strong point. 

Sam’s so tall, close up. 

“What do you want?” Chuck asks, voice quiet, like someone’s going to overhear them. 

“The same as you,” Sam replies, just as quietly.

And Sam kisses him, and it’s not the weirdest thing to happen today. It’s not even close, but it shakes him, nonetheless, more than any of the rest of it. It shakes the heart of him.

Sam kisses him, mouth wide and mobile, hot and wet, and Chuck tilts his head back to accommodate him, parts his legs and lets Sam thrust his thigh between them, lets Sam hold him hard against his bookshelf, and press against him. The whole thing lurches just a little from the weight of them, and some books tilt all the way off the top shelf and fall at their feet: Mystery Spot, Route 666, Asylum.

Sam’s fingers trace the buttons of Chuck’s shirt, and then twist in the fabric and _yank_ the seams apart. There’s a curling flare in Chuck’s belly, and he pushes against Sam, fists his hand through Sam’s hair and kisses him back, gives it all he’s got, because he may only be five foot ten and a half in his bare feet and one hundred forty pounds soaking wet, but if he gets to have this, he’s not going to waste a single second.

**

It’s probably all sorts of wrong that he knows how to pleasure a man from visions sent by a God whom reports (at least those he’s seen painted on signs on the roadside outside military funerals) suggest hates fags, but Chuck’s not going to question it. He hasn’t got that many advantages, anyway.

He knows Sam inside and out; he knows what Sam’s done - what he _will do_ \- and he doesn’t care. He knows that when he wrenches his mouth from Sam’s, and bites down hard on his shoulder, right through the plaid of his shirt, that Sam will swear and buck against him. He knows that Sam likes it strong and rough and desperate, but he likes to be held, afterward. He likes it to mean something.

Chuck shouldn’t know that. But then, he shouldn’t know that they’re all fucking doomed, either, and there’s nothing left for any of them to lose.

**

Sam lets Chuck wrestle him down on the bed, and it fills him with a bright surge of unexpected confidence. Sam _let_ him. Because Sam _wanted_ him to do it. Chuck shuffles down, and settles on his knees, straddling Sam’s hips. He runs a covetous hand along the bare strip of skin where Sam’s shirt has ridden up, tucks his fingers under the waistband of Sam’s jeans. His skin is burning hot, smooth and warm.

Sam’s eyes are closed, hair tousled against the comforter, a tiny dent of frown between his brows. Chuck can’t tell if he’s turned on, or if he’s in pain. Or both.

It brings Chuck down to earth with a bit of a jolt. Sometimes, when it comes down to it, he’s really just calamitously stupid. He should have been cast out on a mountain-top to the wolves as a baby. He's such a fucking tool. He should have known better.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, sitting back, and Sam looks up at him.

Chuck’s written descriptions of Sam’s eyes, how they won’t settle on just one colour but change in the light. The fans hate it. He’s lost count of the letters he’s received - _In Wendigo, you describe Sam’s eyes as hazel, in Playthings you say they’re “grey-green,” in The Kids are Alright you say they’re “stormy grey-brown.” Frankly, that’s just sloppy writing. How can you not know? Don’t you write that shit down in a file somewhere? Where’s your editor in all this? _ Maybe they’re right. Maybe Sam’s always been filtered through Chuck’s own fanboy adoration. Sam’s special. Chuck loves him, he always has, through all of it. 

Right now, Sam’s eyes are flat brown and absolutely expressionless.

“I thought you wanted to,” Sam says, guardedly.

“I do,” Chuck admits. He’d be a fool to try and deny it, with the hard ridge of his erection taut against the crotch of his jeans, his heart hammering in his chest. Sam looks down, traces a finger down the line of him, and Chuck swallows, audibly, and puts a hand over Sam’s, stopping the movement. Maybe holding him there. He’s a prophet, not a saint.

“I do,” he repeats. “But why do you?” He’s suddenly conscious of his unkempt beard, his thinness, his pallor. He looks like a man who’s been living in a cave for the last year. Appearances aren’t always deceiving – he might as well have been.

“Do you know how long it is since anyone’s looked at me like you do?” Sam says, after a long moment, and Chuck knows him well enough to read “anyone” as “Dean”. 

Chuck knows all that’s been over since Dean came back from hell, that strange, compelling, deeply disturbing, deeply _sexual_ relationship between the two of them, the dark dreams of Chuck’s fevered imaginings. None of _that’s_ made it into any of the books (hello, they’re _brothers_ ) because Jesus Christ, his readership’s small enough (and weird enough) as it is. 

Chuck shakes his head. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t _want_ to know.

“You look at me like I’m better than you could possibly have imagined,’ Sam explains, and runs a finger down the side of Chuck’s face, loops a curl in the side of his beard, an affectionate little gesture that cuts right through him. “You’re the only person on this earth who isn’t disappointed every time you look at me.”

Oh, God.

Sam lets his hands rest on Chuck’s hips, arches up against him, rubs himself against Chuck’s ass in a long stretching curl. Chuck shuts his eyes for a minute and tries to force down the urge to lean in and just take. He could, he knows he could. He wants to. He _really_ wants to.

“Sam,” he says, and his voice breaks on it. “You can’t go on like this. It can’t come to any good.”

“You know what it was like, without him, what he’s given up, what we’ve both lost,” Sam says, voice quiet, desperately persuasive, and his eyes have changed again, dark with emotion. “You know who we were to each other. Lilith took that from me. She took that from me and I’m going to find a way to stop her.” 

Chuck leans down, and lets himself brush a soft kiss over Sam’s mouth. 

“He still loves you,” he says, against Sam’s lips. He kisses again, and feels Sam’s abstraction as he leans up and kisses back, runs a careless hand down Chuck’s back, over his flank. Chuck leans back into it. He’s hard, achingly so. Sam isn’t: it’s as if his brain wants this, but his body recognizes the impossibility.

“He doesn’t,” Sam says, biting Chuck’s lips, his neck. Distracting, but not enough. Not quite enough.

It was probably always too much to ask for, too much to hope for. Chuck could press on with this. He knows Sam’s willing, or at least he thinks he is. It would be good, between them, he thinks. For a little time. But it would still be wrong. He’s a prophet, and Chuck doesn’t know the rules, but he thinks that if there was a guidebook (and he doesn’t think the Bible counts, or he’d be writing on stone tablets and counselling Sam and Dean against eating cheeseburgers, for a start) it would definitely rule out using your special visions to get in someone’s pants. With great power comes great responsibility, or so he’s heard.

Chuck touches Sam’s face, gently, and whispers a last biting little kiss against his neck. He rolls off to the side, lies there on his back next to Sam, and stares at the ceiling, the familiar long crack in the plaster that reminds him of a toothy crocodile, like the one in _Peter Pan_ , and the dark nubby cobwebs in the corners of the room.

“He does,” Chuck whispers. “I’ve seen it.”

He can hear Sam’s breath, next to him. He can feel the way Sam’s struggling to control it, trying to hold all his emotion inside, keep himself going the way he did when Dean was dead, and the only way forward each morning was through Sam’s own stubbornness. 

Chuck respects that. He knows the tenacious claws of his own addiction. He thinks that maybe Sam Winchester isn’t addicted to the blood of demons at all. He’s addicted to his brother, and that’s the withdrawal that’s so hard to bear, that’s influencing his decisions and making him hurt.

Chuck sits up, and scrubs a hand over his face. His beard’s perhaps a little out of control. And he really – really, seriously – needs to think about doing a little housework. Washing his sheets. Getting his act together. 

He didn’t think it mattered. He didn’t think _he_ mattered.

“You’ve seen us together, me and Dean,” Sam says, and Chuck doesn’t know if he means in the past, or in the future. Both are true. 

He feels a bit defensive about it. “I didn’t know you were real,” he says, and the thought of it makes him wistful all over again. “It wasn’t like I was spying on you. I thought it was my imagination.”

Sam snuffles a little laugh. “Some imagination.” 

That’s for fucking sure. He looks over his shoulder, and Sam’s looking at him with a resigned kind of affection. Chuck smiles back. “You have no idea,” he replies.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and stands up. 

“You want something to eat?” he asks Sam. “I’ve only got cereal, but we could order in.”

**

By the time Sam makes it down to the kitchen, Chuck’s already ordered. He doesn’t have to ask Sam what he likes – he knows. He’s kind of a heavenly-sanctioned stalker. He likes that phrase, and runs it over his tongue as he gets beers out of the fridge. He’s itching to write it down. To try and write Sam down, again, before it all fades. 

Sam walks up behind him on cat-quiet feet. Although that’s a cliché, isn’t it? Mrs Smeldt’s cat, the wall-eyed ginger tom who sometimes climbs in Chuck’s window when his owner is vacuuming (and who obviously knows there’s little chance of that sort of noise over at Chuck’s), has heavy feet, always jumping off the kitchen counter and onto the floor like a sack of potatoes falling over. Sam’s quieter than cat-quiet. He’s practically silent.

Chuck jumps, and swears, and Sam puts a hand on his waist, leans in to kiss Chuck chastely on the ear. At least, it’s chaste from Sam’s point of view, Chuck’s pretty sure: he, on the other hand, springs another instant boner, and refuses to turn around.

“It’s not just the way you look at me,” Sam says, like they’re still having the same conversation, unpunctuated by massive self-doubt, two shots of bourbon and pizza-ordering on Chuck’s part. “You’re smart, and that’s... compelling, you know? And you’ve got integrity.” That’s unexpected, and Chuck swings around.

“ _You’ve_ got integrity,” he says, back. “You just don’t always make the right choices.”

Sam’s grin is pained, and Chuck wishes the words back again. Too late.

“And you’re honest,” Sam remarks. They look at each other for a long moment, and then Sam smiles, and his eyes are hazel in the bright light of the kitchen, Chuck’s certain of that.

“You remember Dave Carterton?” Sam asks, and Chuck does. He’s the guy Sam dated for a while in his sophomore year at college, before he met Jessica.

“The medieval literature major,” Chuck says, and Sam nods.

“He looked a lot like you,” Sam muses. “Maybe I’ve got a type.”

Chuck’s honest, alright. He can’t help it, really. It’s actually more the total inability to keep his mouth shut when he should. Maybe that’s why God chose him: he’s got the worst internal censor of anyone he’s ever met. 

“Other than your brother, you mean?” he asks, and there’s an awkward pause.

“That just took things too far, didn’t it?” Chuck says. “It did, didn’t it? Yes. Well. Let’s pretend I didn’t say that. Let’s just cycle back and pretend that that I didn’t say that.” 

Sam just looks at him. He's babbling, and he can't stop.

He’s rescued by a knock at the door. After the day he’s had, with his luck, he expects it’s the devil, or at the least that scary little girl from down the road who’s constantly trying to sell him Girl Scout cookies but it’s just the pizza guy. Chuck tips him double.

Sam’s sitting at the kitchen table, sipping his beer, still the hottest person Chuck’s ever seen in real life, and he has a real moment of doubt at what he’s passed up. And then Sam turns to him, and Chuck sees gratitude in his eyes, and friendship, unexpectedly, and it’s alright. It’s really alright. 

They eat pepperoni with extra cheese, and they’re still eating and talking when Dean returns with the angel in tow, and it’s all Apocalypse, all the time, and Chuck doesn’t see Sam on his own again.

**

The night after the Winchesters leave town, Chuck’s visited by another angel, one who’s even further from the little china doll at the top of Chuck’s childhood Christmas tree than Castiel is. He wonders who Zachariah’s vessel was, in his regular life. He wanders what it must feel like, to be possessed by something so much greater than your capacity to imagine. 

Then again, Chuck thinks that he knows what that feels like. Just a bit.

“Do what you always do,” Zachariah tells him. “Write.”

Chuck intends to, but not they way they want him to. He’s got agency. He can decide for himself. He’s got free will, after all. He just forgot, for a while there.

**

He dreams of Sam that night.

Sam’s riding shotgun in the Impala, and gazing out into the dark. He sees light reflect on the shining dimes of a hare’s eyes before it scampers across the road. Dean swears, and brakes, and the car swerves almost a full doughnut before shuddering to a halt.

They both sit there, silent and shocked.

“That’s not how it ends,” Sam says, on a breathy laugh. “You driving us into some power pylon in Minnesota.” 

Dean’s quiet, like he’s been the whole journey.

”Your boyfriend tell you that?” he says, suddenly, and Sam looks across at him, sees the judgement in his eyes, the stiff set of his jaw. _He means me,_ Chuck thinks, in the dream, and it’s dizzying, like standing between two mirrors and seeing yourself reflected into infinity.

“Aw, baby, you know I love you best,” Sam mocks, meaning it to wound, and watches Dean’s jaw get even tighter.

“Fuck you,” Dean hisses, and Sam leans back in his seat, crossing his legs at the ankles, and shutting his eyes. 

Sam’s expecting that to be the end of it, but the next thing he knows, the door’s slamming shut, and Dean’s out of there, striding down the road, right out of the range of the headlights, and Sam follows him, leaves the car there in the middle of the dirt road, embraces Dean there in the middle of the dark whispering fields, and Chuck can see Dean pulling away, and this time Sam doesn’t let him, just holds him and lets him fight out all his anger, all his grief, and finally, when Dean calms, Sam takes his face between his hands and kisses him, gently as anything, and Dean kisses back.

**

Chuck forces himself awake, opens his eyes to the cobwebs and the cracks and the thin slip of moonlight that scatters itself between the curtains. That’s not his to see, not anymore.

The house is quiet, and still. He's alone, and that's not such a bad thing.

Chuck has seventy-three new comment notifications in his inbox and he deletes them without even opening them up. 

The open page of Microsoft Word is bright like a mirror, and his hands curve into their familiar position over the keyboard. He’s not sure if there are words left in him that describe things that aren’t Sam’s bright-eyed wilfulness and Dean’s desperate courage. That aren’t for that last shining moonlit image of them standing in the middle of that Minnesota road and kissing, breathing each other’s air, like that’s all they ever needed.

The words are there, Chuck knows it. He just has to find them. 

He repudiates God; he defies the angels with their disguised directives and hidden messages. Fuck them.

Tonight, he wants to write about a struggling writer, who’s got a problem with the bottle, but wants to make amends. He thinks there’s maybe a girl in that story, a girl who loves horses but can’t afford to keep one, who’s 38 years old and still keeps a poster of an appaloosa pony on the wall of her office cubicle. Her name’s Diane. They’re going to meet in the New York City Library, and fall in love, but that’s just the beginning.

The words stride across the page, outrageously confident, unexpectedly elegant, like flight, like love. He keeps on long into the night, but not because he has to, but because the air is still and silent and the words are flowing, and there’s not much time left.

The world is ending, and Chuck Shurley has a novel to write.


End file.
